 CHAPTER XVI. THE MENTOR, NUMBER 29, VOLUME 1, GREAT AMERICAN INVENTORS, BY H. ADDINGTON-BRUCE Anyone who reads the history of the United States must be impressed with the supremely important part played by the inventor in the evolution of the nation. The explorer and pioneer, the statesman, diplomat, and soldier, all these have contributed and contributed notably to the upbuilding of the mighty republic of today. But it is beyond dispute that in the long run their efforts would have counted for comparatively little had it not been for the genius of those who have bent their energies to the devising of means for the development of the country's marvelously rich resources, and have still further added to the national wealth by the creation of unsuspected channels for the profitable employment of human enterprise and labor. It was in the humble workshops of men like Whitney, Fitch, and Fulton that, almost as soon as the independence of the United States had been won by the sword, the foundations were laid for its rise to the standing of a world power. Every invention these men made meant a gain in the nation's strength, and a wider opening of the door of opportunity to all native-born Americans and to the constantly increasing host of newcomers from abroad. The American inventors have not simply astonished mankind, they have enhanced the prestige, power, and prosperity of their country. Take, for example, the results that have flowed from a single invention, that of the Whitney Cotton Gin. When the young Yankee schoolmaster and law student Eli Whitney was graduated from Yale and settled in Georgia in 1792, the production of cotton in the southern states was insignificant. At that time, indeed, cotton was grown by the southerners chiefly for decorative effect in gardens because of its hands of flowers. Its cultivation for commercial purposes was virtually out of the question, owing to the fact that no means were available for economically separating the lint from the seed. This had to be done by hand, and since it took ten hours for a quick worker to separate one pound of lint from its three pounds of seed, no adequate returns could be had. What was needed, as his southern friends pointed out to Whitney, was the invention of some apparatus for performing the work of separation, cleanly and quickly. The problem was one that appealed to him with peculiar force. Even as a boy in Massachusetts he had been fond of tinkering with mechanical appliances. At the early age of twelve he had made a violin of fairly good tone. A year later he was making excellent knives, and before he was fifteen he was recognized as the best mechanic in his native town of Westboro. It was therefore with real enthusiasm that he set up a workshop in the basement of his Georgia home, and varied his law studies by experimenting in the manufacture of a cotton gin. Within a few months he had successfully completed his self-imposed task by the creation of a machine equipped with hundreds of tiny metal fingers, each of which did more work in quicker time than the human hand could possibly do. That same year, 1793, fully five million pounds of cotton were harvested in the United States, the product of a planting stimulated solely by the faith in the Whitney gin. By the year of Whitney's death, 1825, cotton was indisputably king in the commercial life of the nation. The value of the cotton exports for that year being more than thirty six million dollars, as against a valuation of barely thirty million dollars for all other American exports. The eventual abolition of slavery served only to accentuate the stupendous importance of the cotton gin. Under free labor the production of cotton has steadily risen until nowadays it annually runs into the billions of pounds, with a valuation of many hundreds of millions of dollars, and affords employment not only an enormous army of cultivators, but to a still greater army of workers in factory, office, and store. Even of much greater importance have been the results of the labors of another illustrious American inventor, Robert Fulton. Born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in November 1765, Fulton, by reasoning on the astonishing number and variety of his inventions, may well be called the Edison of his time. Similar to all truly great inventors, he was a man of broad vision and keen imagination. What he was most interested in was not immediate consequences, but ultimate effects, and in working on the complicated mechanical problems with which his mind was incessantly occupied, he kept steadily in view their significance to society as a whole. Thus one of his most ingenious creations, the famous Fulton torpedo, crude forerunner of the deadly submarine missiles of today, was inspired by an ardent desire to produce something that would make war so terrible as to impel mankind to a universal peace. And similarly it was with an eye to increasing the welfare and happiness of society that he went to work on the invention with which his name will always be linked, the steamboat. He was not the first to whom the idea had occurred of applying the steam engine to purposes of water transportation. Already the Pennsylvanian William Henry, the Connecticut mechanic John Fitch, the New Jersey inventor John Stevens, and the Scotsman William Simmington had demonstrated more or less successfully the possibility of using steam as a mode of power on the water. But it was left to Fulton to establish definitely the value of the steamboat as a medium for passenger and freight traffic. This he did with his historic Clermont, built at New York in 1807, partly with funds provided by Chancellor Livingston and partly by loans from reluctant and skeptical friends. The general impression was that Fulton had undertaken a hopeless and visionary task. As I had occasion, he himself has related, daily to pass to and from the shipyard while my boat was in progress, I often loitered unknown near idle groups of strangers, gathering in little circles, and heard various inquiries as to the object of this new vehicle. The language was uniformly that of scorn, sneer, or ridicule. A loud laugh often rose at my expense, the dry jest, the wise calculation of losses and expenditures, the dull but endless repetition of Fulton's folly. As everybody knows, the Clermont did not sink or otherwise come to grief when she started up the Hudson, August 11, 1807, for her maiden voyage to Albany. On the contrary, she made the journey against the wind at an average rate of nearly five miles an hour, and, with the wind again ahead, returned to New York at about the same speed. Compared with the steaming powers of the modern ocean Leviathan, this was a sorry enough showing, but with the continued success of the Clermont and her sister boats, the Rereton and the Car of Neptune, which together constituted the world's first regular line of steamboats, it was sufficient to prove for all time that man had made another superb advance in the mastery of the forces of nature. Very different but also of great value was the service rendered by Elias Howell of Sewing Machine fame. There are two stories as to the genesis of this wonderful labor-saving device. One is that it was suggested to Howell by the chance remark of a visitor to the Boston machine shop in which he was employed. The other and more romantic story is that the idea of a machine for sewing garments originated from a desire on Howell's part to lighten the labor of his wife, who, when he was ill and out of work, was obliged to take in sewing and toil far into the night. Whichever version is correct, it is certain that in 1843, Howell was then only twenty-four years old, he set to work in the garret of his father's home in Cambridge, and about a year later gave to the world a sewing machine that embodied the principal features of the most up-to-date models of the present day. For long, however, the world was reluctant to accept this splendid invention. The tailors of Boston, to whom he first offered it, refused to adopt it on the ground that it would ruin their business, and later in New York there were anti-sewing machine demonstrations, fomented by labor leaders who failed to realize that, in the end, labor-saving devices of any real merit were always certain to increase, not decrease, the demand and opportunities for the working man and working woman. In the case of the sewing machine, the truth of this has long since been demonstrated. Not only has it become a familiar household adjunct, freeing millions of women from the slavery of the needle, and thus most effectively answering the piteous plea of Hood's song of the shirt, but it has also brought about a marvelous expansion of the clothing industry. It has, in fact, created an entirely new and most important branch of that industry, the ready-made clothing business, giving employment to hundreds of thousands of people, and providing well-patterned and well-finished garments at prices undreamed of in other days. Surely how no less than Fulton and Whitney deserves to be regarded as a benefactor of humanity. So, too, with Samuel F. B. Morse and Alexander Graham Bell, the one the father of the electric telegraph, the other the inventor of the telephone. If anybody had told Samuel Morse in 1811, when, as a youth of twenty, he sailed from New York to Liverpool to study painting under Benjamin West, that he would be known to posterity as an inventor rather than an artist, he would have laughed to the prophecy to scorn. But, as has happened to other gifted men, circumstances conspired to turn and fix the thoughts of this brilliant son of New England on problems unconnected with the routine of his daily life, yet appealing to him with such force as to change the whole course of his career. The first telegraph instrument. With Morse, the turning point was reached in 1827, when some years after his return from England, he attended a course of lectures in New York on the subject of electromagnetism. What he then heard fired his imagination and led him during a second visit abroad to study more closely the nature of electricity. He especially became interested in the possibility of utilizing this great natural force as a medium for long distance communication, and, when homeward bound in the autumn of 1832, applied himself to this one problem, to such good purpose that before landing in New York, he was able to show to his fellow passengers plans of the instrument that was to immortalize his name. It was not until five years afterward, however, that Morse made the first working demonstration of his invention, which by most people was regarded as a scientific toy rather than a creation of the highest practical utility. And a scientific toy it remained until, after a heartbreaking struggle to secure the necessary financial aid, Morse persuaded Congress in 1843 to appropriate $30,000 for the construction of a telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore. The first message to be flashed over this line, May 1, 1844, was the news of the nomination of Henry Clay for their presidency. And with the sending of that message, one of the greatest inventions in the history of mankind definitely gained recognition as an accomplished fact. Alexander Graham Bell, experimenting in the same field of long distance communication by the aid of electricity, was more fortunate in securing early acknowledgment of the merits of his telephone, a public demonstration of which was given at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876. Connected with this invention, a most interesting story is told. Bell, it is said, was experimenting with the device for multiplex telegraphy when the accidental snapping of a wire sent a sound vibrating through another wire, which had attached to it at each end, a thin sheet iron disc, a few inches in circumference. At once, Bell asked himself if the sound could be repeated. Experiment showed that it could, and the query then suggested itself to him. Could vocal sounds be thus transmitted? Fourth with, he set himself to the task that resulted, after many failures, in the creation of the telephone. But even in the case of this marvelous instrument, it was for a long time impossible to obtain the necessary financial support. When in 1877, Bell took the telephone to England, he could find no purchaser for half the European rights at $10,000, and in this country, a personal friend declined to advance $2,500 for a half interest. Today, so it is stated, there are in use in the United States alone approximately seven and a half million telephones. Edison, the Master Inventor Never has there been an American inventor who contributed more abundantly than Thomas Alva Edison to the Republic's industrial expansion, nor one who has achieved greatness under a heavier handicap of early disadvantages. Born 1847 of a poor family in an obscure Ohio canal village, Edison began his career at the age of 12 in the occupation of a railway newsboy. It was as a telegrapher, which he became at 18, that his inventive genius first displayed itself. One after another, various devices for improving telegraphic service flowed from his fertile mind until, after his astonishing success in inventing a duplex and quadruplex telegraph, he was able to command the support of a group of New York capitalists in carrying through a long series of experiments that finally resulted in the invention of the now familiar Edison Electric Light. Had it been for only this one invention, Edison's name would be gratefully remembered for all time. But to strengthen his claims on the gratitude of his countrymen and of posterity, there has since come from his New Jersey laboratory a succession of inventions, to name only a few, the phonograph, the kinetoscope, the mimeograph, the storage battery, and the talking movie pictures which have meant new openings for capital, new opportunities for labor, and an incalculable enlargement of the resources of the human race. Whitney, Fulton, Howe, Morse, Bell, Edison. Clearly it is only simple historic justice to rate these great inventors with the great statesmen, warriors, and pioneers who in days gone by have won undying fame as makers of the American Republic. Eli Whitney, One A machine said to have paid off the debts of the South, greatly increased its capital, and trebled the value of its land was the invention of Eli Whitney. This machine was the cotton gin, and like many another inventor, Whitney was regarded with in gratitude. He added hundreds of millions to the wealth of our country, and in return had to endure humiliation and vexation of body and spirit. Eli Whitney was born at Westboro, Massachusetts, on December 8th, 1765. He early showed great mechanical ability, and by the time he was twenty-three years old, had earned enough money to enable him to enter Yale. After graduating, he went to Savannah, Georgia, with the hope of becoming a teacher there. He was disappointed in this, but made the acquaintance of Mrs. Nathaniel Green, widow of the Revolutionary General, and paid a visit to her plantation. When he was there, some men who were also visiting Mrs. Green happened one day to lament the fact that there was no machine for cleaning the staple cotton of its seeds. This work had to be done by hand, and was very slow. Separating one pound of the clean staple from the seed was a day's work for a negro woman. Suddenly Mrs. Green turned to them, gentlemen, she said, apply to my friend here, Mr. Whitney. He can make anything. And she showed them several contrivances the young Northerner had made. Whitney modestly said that he did not know how successfully he would be, but that he would try. In a few weeks he produced a model consisting of a wooden cylinder encircled by rows of slender spikes set half an inch apart, which extended between the bars of a grid set so closely together that the seeds could not pass, but the lint was pulled through by the revolving spikes. A revolving brush cleaned the spikes, and the seed fell into another compartment. This machine could clean fifty pounds of cotton a day, as compared with one pound a day cleaned by hand. Whitney formed a partnership with Phineas Miller, who later married Mrs. Green, and they built a factory at New Haven to make cotton gins. This place was burned to the ground in March 1795, and the partners were plunged into debt. Several infringements of their patent then appeared to discourage them still more, and it was not until 1807 that Whitney's rights were established. In the meanwhile, however, the inventor became disgusted with the struggle and began manufacturing firearms for the government. This proved profitable, and he greatly improved the methods of making arms, but from the cotton gin he received little revenue. His last years were the happiest. In 1817 he married Henrietta Edwards, the youngest daughter of Judge Pierpont Edwards of Connecticut. They had four children, a son and three daughters. Whitney died in New Haven on January 8, 1825. Robert Fulton II Robert Fulton was not the inventor of the steamboat. He was, however, the first man to apply the power of the steam engine to the propulsion of boats in a practical and effective manner. Born of poor parents at Little Britain, now Fulton, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1765, he received only the scantiest education, but early showed promise of becoming an excellent artist. At the age of 17 he took up painting seriously and supported himself thus in Philadelphia until he was 21. Then he bought a farm in Washington County, but soon after was strongly advised to go to England for the purpose of studying art under the American, Benjamin West. There he met Earl Stanhope, Duke of Bridgewater, who interested him in engineering. In 1794 he took out an English patent for superseding canal locks by inclined planes. He also invented about this time a new method for sawing marble, a machine for spinning flags, and another for making ropes. Soon after this he went to Paris and built a submarine, the Nautilus. This boat was tried in Breast Harbor in 1801, before a commission appointed by Napoleon Bonaparte, and Fulton succeeded in blowing up a small vessel anchored there for that purpose. Two years later at Paris he was also successful in propelling a boat by steam power. Fulton returned to America and in partnership with Robert Livingston constructed the first American steam boat, the Clermont. This was launched in the spring of 1807 and its success caused a great sensation. The principle of propelling boats by steam was now proved. The Clermont was soon established as a regular passenger boat between New York and Albany. Fulton built the Demologus, or Fulton I, for the United States government during the years 1814 and 1815. This was the first steam battleship ever constructed. In February 1815 the inventor caught cold from exposure and rapidly became worse. On February 24th he died, mourned by everyone who had known the man and his achievements. Elias Howe. Three. It is a remarkable fact that some of the greatest and most useful inventions have been bitterly opposed by the very persons whom they were designed to help. The Bowman of Olden Time resented the introduction of guns. The stagecoach lines tried in every way to block the building of railways, and Elias Howe, the inventor of one of the greatest labor-saving devices in the world, the sewing machine, was ridiculed, discouraged, and denounced as an enemy of poor sewing women, the ones whose toil he was seeking to lighten. They imagined that with the introduction of the sewing machine their occupation would be taken away. Elias Howe was born at Spencer, Massachusetts on July 9th, 1819, one of a family of eight children. His father was a farmer in Miller, and Elias's early years were spent in the mill. At the same time he managed to pick up a smattering of education. He went to Lowell, Massachusetts in 1835 to work in a cotton mill. Two years later he obtained a place in a Cambridge machine shop in which his cousin, Nathaniel P. Banks, afterward governor of Massachusetts, was also employed. Howe married at the age of 21 and moved to Boston. It was there that the first germs of his great idea became implanted in his brain. To increase the family income his wife did sewing at night. As Howe watched her slowly and laboriously stitching a seam, his inventive mind sought and sought for some way to decrease her toil. He had a natural bent for mechanics, and it was not long before he had constructed the first crude sewing machine. This was in October 1844, but although he now had his idea, he lacked money to prove its value. However, a man named Fisher in Cambridge liked his invention and agreed to board Howe in his family and to advance $500 in return for a half interest in the patent. By the middle of next May Howe had constructed a machine which did sewing that promised to outlast the cloth. But the invention was opposed everywhere in America. Finally, in 1846, Howe's brother Amesa went to England and managed to sell the English rights in the machine for $1,250 to a William Thomas. This man also gave Elias Howe a place in his factory at $15 a week, but he treated the inventor shamefully, and Howe threw up the situation. He sent his family back to America ahead of him and then returned himself. He landed in New York with less than a dollar in his pocket and was met with the news that his wife was dying of consumption at Cambridge. He managed to borrow some money and reached her side just before she passed away. These were Howe's darkest days. Imitations of his machine were infringing on his patent, and he had to begin several suits to establish his rights. He and another man now began to manufacture sewing machines in a small way. It was during this time that the sewing machine riots took place, but soon the real value of the invention was seen and all opposition ceased. Brighter times began for the inventor. He won his patent suits, and by 1863 his royalties were estimated at $4,000 a day. At the Paris Exposition of 1867 he was awarded a gold medal and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. His last years were happy ones. He died on October 3, 1867. Samuel F. B. Morse, Four The story has been told that the first words that ever came over a telegraph instrument were What hath God wrought, and that they were spelled out by Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraphic code. This was supposed to have taken place in 1844 in Baltimore, and to have proclaimed the fact that Morse's dream of telegraphy had become a reality. We are now told on good authority that this was not the first message to be sent by telegraph, nor was Morse the sender of the words. Instead it was sent by one of the committee who were debating upon the proposal of Morse, the inventor, to string a telegraph line from Baltimore to Washington. Morse, who wanted to end the discussion and at the same time demonstrate his invention, strung a wire from the committee room to the top of the Capitol. One of the committee who was opposed to President Tyler wrote, Tyler deserves to be hanged. This was received by the man at the other end, exactly as it was composed. Samuel Finley B. Morse was born at Charlestown, Massachusetts, on April 27, 1791. He was the son of the Reverend Jenediah Morse and the great grandson of Samuel Finley, the second president of the College of New Jersey at Princeton. Morse entered Yale at the age of 14, which was not considered extremely young in those days. It was there that he first began the study of electricity, but his tastes led him more strongly toward art than toward science, and in 1811 the young graduate became the pupil of Washington, Alston and went with him to England. Here he remained four years, distinguishing himself with his brush and making many friends. During the next few years, the young artist traveled about New England, painting portraits for the sum of $15 apiece. Later he increased his price to $60 aportrait, doing an average of four a week. By the money thus earned, he was enabled to marry Miss Lucretia P. Walker on October 6, 1818. In 1825, Morse was one of the founders of the National Academy of Design, and was its first president from 1826 until 1845. He made a second visit to Europe in 1829, and traveled about the continent for three years before returning to New York. During all this time, however, while he was working at his art, Morse's mind had also been occupied with another interest. That was electromagnetism, and the possibility of communication between far distant places by means of it. It was on board the ship Sully, in which he was returning to America that he said, if the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of the circuit, I see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted by electricity. And in a few days he had finished some rough plans of an apparatus to do this. But it was a 12 years struggle against poverty and discouragement before he could get any apparatus that would work. Finally, however, he was successful in this, and after taking out a patent, applied to Congress for the money to experiment with a telegraph over a circuit of sufficient length to test its possibility and value. After long delay, he was at last granted this in 1843. A line was built from Baltimore to Washington, and on May 24, 1844, Miss Ellsworth, daughter of the Commissioner of Patents, sent the first message from the Chamber of the Supreme Court in Washington to Baltimore. Three years later, Morse was compelled to defend his invention in the courts, and successfully proved his claim to be called the inventor of the electromagnetic recording telegraph. He married for the second time in 1848. In 1871, a bronze statue of Morse was erected in Central Park, New York City, and the following year, on April 2, the great inventor died, simple, dignified, and kindly to the end. Alexander Graham Bell Five One hot afternoon in June, about forty years ago, a young man was standing in a grimy workshop by the side of a crude little machine, composed of a clock-spring reed, a magnet, and a wire. He was bending over this queer machine, listening intently. Suddenly he bent nearer, a startled look of excitement upon his face. From the clock-spring had come a faint, almost inaudible sound. The young man straightened up and ran into an adjoining room where another man stood near a second instrument, similar to the first. Snap that reed again, he cried excitedly. The assistant obeyed him, and again came that faint twang from the spring in the front room. The telephone was boring, and the man who accomplished this wonder was a poor young professor of elocution in Boston, Alexander Graham Bell. He was not an American by birth. He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 1, 1847. His father was Alexander Melville Bell, the inventor of a system by which the deaf can read speech by observing the motion of the lips. The Bell family moved to Canada in 1870, and Alexander, the younger, took up teaching the deaf and dumb in Boston. He became instructor of phonetics, or the science of articulate sound, in Monroe School of Oratory. He was a hard worker, but poor. One time when he had rheumatism, his employer had to pay his hospital expenses. It was about this time that Bell began experimenting with the transmission of sound by electricity. For a number of years other people had been trying to do this. Sir Charles Wheatstone in England had discovered that wires charged with electricity often carried noises in a curious way. In 1869, Reiss, our German professor, constructed an instrument that sent a series of clicks along an electric wire to an electromagnetic receiver at the other end, and others were turning their attention to this interesting phase of telegraphy. But it was Alexander Graham Bell who first succeeded in grasping the correct idea. A few months after the incident described above, on a day in January 1876, he called some of his pupils into a room and showed them an instrument that transmitted singing from the cellar of the building to where they were on the fourth floor. People were at first slow to appreciate the importance of this great invention, but gradually they came to see its value, and today there are over seven million telephones in use in the United States alone. Money and honors have poured in upon the inventor, who still lives to enjoy his triumph. His income is said to be more than one million dollars a year. In 1880 the French government awarded him the Volta Prize of ten thousand dollars, and two years later he received from the same country the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. Thomas Alva Edison 6. The scene, the Boston office of a great telegraph company. The time, a half-century ago, enter a tall young man wearing a slouchy, broad-brimmed hat and a wet duster clinging to his legs, who marches into the superintendent's office and says, Here I am. The superintendent gazes at him. Who are you? he finally asks. Tom Edison. And who on earth might Tom Edison be? The young man explains that he has been ordered to report for duty at the Boston office. He's told to sit down and wait. A little while later a New York sender, who was one of the most rapid in the telegraph business at the time, calls up. All the operators are busy. Let that new fellow triumph, says the chief. Edison sits down, and for four and one-half hours takes the speedy messages. The faster the instrument clicks, the faster he writes the words. At the end New York calls, Hello! Hello yourself, Edison flashes back. Who the dickens are you? asks the New York operator. Tom Edison. You are the first man in the country that could ever take me at my fastest, clicks out New York, and the only one who could ever sit at the other end of my wire for more than two hours and a half. I'm proud to know you. This little story of Thomas Alva Edison shows that even as a young man he exhibited unusual ability. He was born on February 11, 1847, at Mylon, Erie County, Ohio. His family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, when the boy was seven, and when he was only 12 years old, Edison became a trained news boy on the railway to Detroit. It was during this time that he rigged up apparatus in the baggage car and experimented with chemistry and telegraphy. He was but 15 when he became a telegraph operator, but his studies and experiments interfered so much with his duties that he was discharged many times. He worked in a number of cities of the United States and Canada. At the age of 21 he had built an automatic repeater by which a telegraphic message could be transferred from one wire to another without the aid of an operator. By means of this messages could be sent directly to a much greater distance than formerly. Edison finally went to Boston, as related herein, and thence to New York in 1869. There he invented an improved printing telegraph for stock quotations, the ticker. For this he received $40,000. Then he built a laboratory at Newark, New Jersey, but four years later moved to Menlo Park and later to West Orange, New Jersey. All the time he continued his experiments and inventions. He lives now at Orange and is as hard a worker as he was when he was a young man. Among Edison's more important inventions are his system of multiplex telegraphy, the carbon telephone transmitter, the phonograph, the incandescent lamp and light system, the kinetoscope, and the talking moving picture. In all he has had 700 patents granted to him. In 1878 Edison was made chevalier and afterward commander of the Legion of Honor by the French government. CHAPTER 17 OF THE MENTOR This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Josh Kibbey. THE MENTOR II BY VARIUS GINMERE THE WINGED SORT OF FRANCE BY HOWARD W. COOK THE SKYMAN SUPREME BY COMMANDOM PER CARD OF THE STORK SQUADRIN For more than two years all of us have seen him cleaving the heavens above our heads, the heavens lighted up by shining sun or darkened by lowering tempests, bearing upon his poor wings a part of our dreams, of our faith and success, of all that our hearts held of confidence and hope. Kinmer was a powerful idea in a frail body, and I lived near him with the secret sorrow of knowing that someday the idea would slay the container. Poor boy, all the children of France who wrote to him daily, to whom he was the marvelous ideal, vibrated with all his emotions, lived through his joys and suffered his dangers. He will remain to them the living model hero, greatest in all history. They love him as they have learned to love the purest glories of our country. Kinmer was great enough to have done that which he did without seeking recompense, save in the silent consciousness of having done his full duty. GINMERE THE WINGED SORT OF FRANCE HIS ANCESTRY IN CHILDHOOD ONE Not only modern, but ancient French records glorify the name of Kinmer. In the time of Roland and Charlemagne there was a Kinmer that performed noble deeds. An eleventh-century history of the Crusades extols the name of a Kinmer of Bologne. The Treaty of Garand, which terminated in 1365, a war of succession in Brittany, bore the signature of Geoffrey Kinmer, among thirty nightly signers. In 1464 the old and honorable name was first spelled with a Y by Yvonne Kinmer, a man of arms in the service of his country. Bernard Kinmer, great-grandfather of George, was an instructor and jurisprudence in Paris during the Revolution, and was later made president of the Tribunal of Mayans. A son, Auguste, who lived to be ninety-three, left to posterity a remarkable collection of memoirs of the Revolution, The Empire and the Restoration. One of his brothers, an officer in Napoleon's army, was killed at the Siege of Vilna in 1812. Another, a naval officer, died of wounds received at Trafalgar. A fourth brother named Achille became the grandfather of Georges, and it was his exploits among all the tales of his forebears that the youthful grandson loved best to read about. One adventurous anecdote of the child Achille became part of family history, and in its revelation of mature purpose and utter poise under confounding circumstances recalls instances of the boyhood of the future ace of aces. When the small Achille arrived one morning at his school in Paris, he found it closed. The mistress, he was told, had been taken away, summoned before the Revolutionary Tribunal. When he inquired where this tribunal was, he was laughingly informed, and straightway he set out to find it. When the eight-year-old appeared in the courtroom alone, he was received by assembly and judges with amazement, then with railery, but, in no wise disconcerted, he continued up the imposing aisle to the place where the mighty Robespierre sat. Humorously, Robespierre met his request, that his teacher be allowed to return to her classes, by remarking that the child's need of her could not be great, as doubtless she had taught him little in the past. In his desire to refute the injustice, the boy begged permission to recite his lessons for the day. When he had finished, Robespierre impulsively took him in his arms and embraced him. Then he gave into his charge the schoolmistress, and permitted them both to depart. Seven years later, Achilles-Guinemere was a volunteer in the army that invaded Spain. In 1812 he was taken prisoner. Later he escaped, and in 1813, at the age of 21, he was decorated with a cross of the Legion of Honor. His grandson, who strongly resembled his early portraits, received the same honor when he was a few months younger. Of the four sons of the President of the Tribunal of Mayence, only one, Achilles, had descendants. The son of the latter was Paul-Guinemere, a French army officer and military historian, and his only son was Georges, the young chieftain of the sky. Even as a very little boy, Georges carried his head with pride and set his ambitions high. Adored by his mother and sisters, he was a constant object of solicitude because of ill health. When he was of school age, he received instruction from the governess of his sisters. Very young he showed evidences of those qualities of honor, truth and bravery, that earned him in later years all the honors France could bestow. Very young he fell under the spell of Joan of Arc, she who was wounded in Compiègne, the home of his boyhood, and he clamored for stories of her and of others of his country's warriors. And in different pupil in the grammar school of Compiègne, he was placed in Stanislaus Military College, his father's alma mater. A group photograph of the students represents Georges as a boy of twelve, pale, thin, with dark, willful eyes lightened by smoldering fires of dream and ambition. As a student he was quick and intelligent, but he was mischievous and headstrong under discipline. In play he preferred warlike games and invariably chose parts that gave him opportunities to attack, which he did with agility and vigor, often to the discomforture of older opponents. One of his teachers wrote a sketch of a school boyhood that portrays many outstanding traits of the keen mayor of the future. In playground battles he had no desire to command, he liked above all to fight, and to fight alone. He attacked the strongest, without consideration for any advantage they might have of weight, height, or numbers. Even as a boy he excelled by droidness, suppleness of maneuver, and will to win. His Youth and Apprenticeship. Two. Though hampered by illness and enforced vacations, King Mer graduated from Stanislaus College in his fifteenth year with honors. In the autumn he re-entered the school for a further course of study. His leisure hours were passed installing miniature telephones, and experimenting with paper airplane models. His ability for invention and mechanics was marketed. All the sciences held interest for him, but he had special liking for chemistry and mathematics. He was fond of reading, but his choice of books fell solely on those that dealt with war, chivalry, and adventure. One of Young King Mer's intimates was Jean Krebs, whose father was a pioneer in the development of aerostatics and aviation. He was then director of the great Panhard Automobile Works, and on Sundays the two youths spent hours studying motor parts. With their fellow students at the college they were often taken to visit technical establishments after school. George was always to be found beside the one that explained the operations of the machinery. When they were permitted to attend automobile and airplane exhibitions, his delight was boundless. Keen, excited, agitated, he passed from one exhibit to another, commenting and interrogating, and incidentally filling his pockets with catalogues and pamphlets about the different makes of cars and planes. While still at school, he fashioned a small airplane, which he launched with glee over the heads of his companions. At that time, 1910, the eyes of Europe were on the sky. Larry O had crossed the channel. Paul Hahn had soared to a record height of over 4,000 feet. It was the ambition of all French youth to fly. With Keen Mayer, the desire was an obsession. From the aerodrome near Compiègne, he secretly made his first flight, crouched behind an obliging pilot, cramped and uncomfortable but ecstatically happy. So determined was he to follow the profession of the air that pleasures of world travel, enjoyed from months in the fond companionship of his mother and sisters, served in no way to distract him from his purpose. What career shall you adopt, his father inquired when they returned? And as George answered, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, I shall be an aviator. His parent protested that aviation was not a career, but a sport. The boy was obstinate. He confessed that his life was already dedicated to this passion, that on the morning he had first seen a birdman fly above the College of Stanislaus, he had been possessed by a sensation he could not explain. I felt an emotion so deep it seemed sacred, he told his father. I knew then that I must ask you to let me become an aviator. Refused admission to the Ecole Polytechnique, because the professors believed him too frail to finish the courses, he was taken with his family to Biarritz on the coast of France, and there rumors came to them of the war in the month of July 1914. War was declared August 2nd. The following day, George presented himself for medical examination at Bayonne, was rejected, and when he tried still other times was rejected again. Finally his persistence, his devotion to France, his resolve to serve her in the way he felt he could be of the most value, won him the reward of acceptance in the training school at Powell. In January 1915, Gainmayer received his first lessons as a student aviator after having studied two months as a mechanic. On February 1st according to his own narrative, his apprenticeship as a pilot took on aerial character. I drove a taxi, and then the following week I mounted an airplane going in straight lines, turning and gliding, and on March 10th I made two flights lasting 20 minutes in daylight. At last I had found my wings. I passed the examination the next day. Once, Gainmayer barely escaped being scratched from the list of military aviators at the school of Avord because a head pilot complained that he was impudent in making flights that were too difficult for one of his experience, and because he persisted in flying when the weather was unfavorable. When he had flown for six months, he was sent one day on a photography mission. The enemy discovered him. A rain of shells fell on his plane. Keeping on amid the deluge, Gainmayer made not a single turn to escape the attacks. For an hour, he went straight toward his objective until his observer gave the signal to return. Even then the pilot continued to drive on toward the guns that were trying to beat him down, and, handing his personal photographic apparatus to his companion, asked him to take some pictures of the mortar attacking the airplane. From that day on, no one in the squadron doubted the future of this youth, this eagle of the birdmen, this young Frenchman with the face of a woman in the heart of a lion. Pioneer Airmen in France. Three. Fernand Forrest, a countryman of Gainmayers, invented, thirty years ago, an explosion motor whose operations formed the basis of many subsequent experiments in petrol engines. And it was a Frenchman, Clement Adair, who was the first to fly with the motor-driven flying machine. For a time, Adair experimented under the patronage of the French Ministry of War, but he was eventually deprived of governmental sanction and assistance because he was deemed visionary and his inventions impractical. However, the machine in which he made several flights in the year 1897, the Avion, was later one of the treasured exhibits in the first aeronautical salon, and was later placed beside the airplanes of Wolbur Wright, de La Grande, and de Blurrier, as convincing proof that de France belonged to the honor of making the first flying machine. It is related that when Adair first found himself leaving the ground for a test flight, he was so taken by surprise that he nearly lost his senses. Charles C. Turner, author of Marvel's Aviation, narrates the early adventures of Alberto Santos Dumont, the rich young Brazilian who arrived in Paris in 1898 for the purpose of having a navigable balloon made there. Already the name Zeppelin had received passing notice in French and English newspapers, but most people refused to believe reports of his inventions, and those of Santos Dumont, concluding that they were both mad. Santos Dumont, the man who initiated the modern airship movement in France and made the first officially observed airplane flight in Europe, flew around the Eiffel Tower and over the roofs and treetops have startled Paris in his small spherical balloons, propelled by gasoline motor, and in 1902 made flights over the Mediterranean. In Paris he built the first airship station ever constructed. In 1903 his maneuvers above the French Army review of July 14th led to negotiations with the French Minister of War, to whom the young Brazilian made the offer to put his aerial fleet at the disposition of France in case of hostilities with any country except the two Americas. He explained, It is in France that I have met with all my encouragement. In France and with French material I made all my experiments. I accepted the two Americas because I am an American. Santos Dumont, who had astounded the world by the success of his airship experiments, was also the pioneer aviator in France, when he became convinced of the practicality of the heavier-than-air machine. When de la Grande, Blariot, and the Wright brothers leapt into fame, Santos Dumont continued quietly to study and contrive, and in 1909 he brought out the demoiselle, a small airplane on whose design he claimed no patent rights, offering it to the world as a gift of his invention. Between the years 1907 and 1910, many unknown inventors and mechanics won renown through their aerial accomplishments. Outbursts of fervor greeted every fresh success and air endeavor. On wings the patriotism of France soared to heights of exaltation. Lethargy gave way to enthusiasm. Voisin, Blariot, de la Grande, Latham, Paul Hahn, Védrine became national heroes. If a popular aviator flew a winning race, crowds attended his steps and surrounded his hotel. If one was injured, a sympathetic assembly gathered outside the hospital where he lay, and extras were issued by the daily journals as to his condition. Annual airplane meets and exhibitions had the patronage of the French government. Experts were constantly occupied in making mechanical improvements in the motor, steering gear and wings of the wondrous new machines that had intrigued the imagination, the very soul of awakened France. Though France owes a debt to American inventors, always generously acknowledged, French aviators quickly attained supremacy on the continent. When the war came, the country was already dotted with aerodromes and airplane factories, and hundreds of trained aviators and mechanicians were ready to take the air for their beloved France. The Flying Storks. 4. At the time of Guilmer's death, he was commander of the Flying Storks, a squadron of high-record fighting aviators whose feats have for over three years been the sensation of the Allied front. The original membership comprised 10 pilots, some of whom had already attained national renown. Approximately 50 warriors that have carried its emblem down the highways of the air have been killed, wounded or reported missing. Three squadron chiefs, Captain Alguerre, Lieutenant Peretti, and Captain Guilmerre have fallen in aerial battles. Three other chiefs have been gravely wounded, Commandant Picard, Captain Hurtot, and Lieutenant Duelin. The prowess of the Storks may be gauged by the statement that 14 members of this famous esca-drill, only one of 10 score-flying organizations attached to the French Army, brought down a third of all the German planes destroyed before January 1918, or 200 in less than three years. This is the official count. Many more enemy planes met to feed from their guns, but without the required number of official witnesses. Les Sique-Oignets, the Storks, were organized in April 1915 by Comandomper Card, now retired from active fighting. The first machine adopted by the Corps was the Newport III, on whose side was painted a stork with spread wings. In 1917, spad models supplanted the new ports in the service of the Storks. The official records of a dozen aces of the squadron are given. Captain Guilmerre, 53 enemy planes downed. Lieutenant René Dormais, 24. Captain Alfred Hurtot, 21. Lieutenant Duelin, 19. Captain Armand Pinsard, 16. Lieutenant Jean Caput, 15. Lieutenant Terescon, 11. Lieutenant Mathieu de La Tour, 11. Captain Albert Auger, 7. Lieutenant Gond, 6. Lieutenant Boisecchi, 5. Adjutant Harrison, 5. Captain Hurtot, Chief of the Corps from December 1916 until he was wounded in September of the following year, rivaled the marksmanship of Guilmerre when he downed a hostile plane with a single bullet. Hurtot, in the words of an appreciative chronicler of the Storks, used to amuse himself in the midst of battle by politely bowing and waving ironic greetings to his encircling enemies. This open contempt for them increased their hatred, he explained, and tempted them to shake their fists at him in reply, thus often exposing them in their blind fury to a superior adroitness and maneuvering and attack. A grave young pilot, named René Dormais, became so skillful in handling his machine that the superb Guilmerre regarded his ability as greater than that of any of his fellows. Dormais was also a remarkable shot. In four months he was victor over 26 enemy planes, 15 of which were officially witnessed as they fell. The end of René Dormais is veiled in mystery. Following a fierce combat tie in the clouds on May 25, 1917, he pursued his opponents above German territory. Later, observation balloons reported that a French airplane had come to earth across the enemy lines and had been consumed by fire, which indicated to their practiced vision that the pilot had been able to set his plane ablaze before it was seized by German captors. Though the enemy subsequently announced Dormais's death, the report, for certain suspicious reasons, has been given little credence, second only to the crushing loss of Guilmerre, France's idol, as his passing been mourned by fellow aviators and by the nation. As a discriminating observer of the Storks has stated, while both were lads of excessive modesty, Guilmerre's air tactics were far more spectacular than those of Dormais, Guilmerre was perhaps the better marksman of the two, but Dormais he conceded was the better pilot. Dormais' dodging maneuvers were celebrated throughout France. It was on the day of Dormais' disappearance that Guilmerre achieved the Magical Drupal, besides defeating two more planes that fell far within the German lines. Guilmerre the Avenger, Guilmerre the miraculous Knight of the Air. Less than four months later, he fell as Dormais fell on hated enemy soil, and in turn his death was avenged by the famous French ace, René Fonk of Escadril Newport 103, who within two weeks slew the Hun airmen that had brought to earth the winged sort of France. He was our friend and our master, our pride and our protection. His loss is the most cruel of all those so numerous alas that have emblazoned our ranks. Nevertheless, our courage has not been beaten down with him. Our victorious revenge will be hard and inexorable. These are the words of Lieutenant Raymond, Guilmerre's successor's commandant to the flying storks. Hunting in the Air by Captain Georges Guilmerre. Translated from the French. Five. The public as a rule has a false idea of hunting in the hunters. They very easily imagine that we are way up there at our ease, directing events, and that the nearer we are to heaven, the more we are invested with divine power. I cannot express in words the innervation that I feel sometimes, while listening to the inept remarks addressed to me in the form of compliments, and which I am compelled to accept with a smile, which is almost a bite. I want to shout out to the speaker, but my poor fellow, you want not to speak about this subject, for you know nothing whatever about it. You do not understand the first word of it all, and you can hardly believe how little your eulogies please me under the circumstances. But if I answered in this way, no one would think of honoring my sincerity or my desire to spread sane ideas. Rather all would declare that I was a rude fellow, pretentious, and a swaggerer, or something worse. This is the reason that I listen, remain dumb, and let the innervation not me. Some tell me it is better to leave to hunting that mysterious atmosphere which serves as an oriel to the ace. If the laymen were to become competent to judge, he would possibly no longer hold the same admiration for the hunters. You will admit that this suggestion is not very flattering to us. In fine, according to this suggestion, we are interesting to them only because they know nothing about our work. They say of me, Gynmer is a lucky dog. Certainly I am a lucky dog, for I have added up 49, this was written before the grand total was made, victories and am still alive, and I might have been killed during my first fight. If we talk this way, every person alive today is lucky, for he might have died yesterday. But I might astonish some persons considerably if I answered, it's a good thing that I was a lucky dog, for I have been brought down by the enemy on seven different occasions. I know that they will rejoin that this was really luck, for I managed to escape death. But was it luck that day, when carried along by the great speed of my new port, I rushed right past a Bosch, giving him a chance to puncture an arm and wound me in the jaw? Was that luck, my fall of 3000 meters after a shell had passed through a wing of the machine? And how many episodes there are of a similar character? Certainly, I do not wish to pretend that the question of chance which I call providence, does not intervene in war, but between that and the assurance that every act is guided by a manifestation of a good star, there is a world of difference. And if I dispute this opinion so sharply, as far as it concerns me, it is not certain because I am annoyed, but on the contrary, because I believe that it is rendering a poor service to say that we succeed in any human activity through luck. Yet if we only eliminate this factor, we shall recognize the fact that neither that unfortunate Dormais nor I are instances of the effect of chance upon the career of airplane hunters. He was surnamed invulnerable because he almost always came back from his cruises without a scratch. We were almost astounded if his airplane bore the mark of a single bullet. With me on the contrary, I had the special faculty of coming back with missiles all over my machine. Why was there this difference? We had almost the same methods of attack. We proceeded along uniform principles, approaching the enemy to point blank distance. What then? The reason is plain. Dormais was better at maneuvering than I. He called upon his skill to help him at the moment of attack, and when he judged that he was not sure of success, he went into a spin and broke away from the duel. I, on the contrary, used the normal method of flying, never having recourse to acrobatics, unless it was the last means to be employed. I stayed close to my adversary as if I were possessed. When I held him, I would not let him go. These two systems have their advantages and their defects, which should not astonish you, for a perfection is not of this world. I can draw but one conclusion from these two methods of fighting, and it is of capital importance. It is that hunting in the air must be done according to the temperament and character of each individual hunter. If it show itself as individual prowess, all the better. This must be cried out aloud, for many young men coming to the squadron with false ideas and arrested wills, planning to bring down bosses in the style of Dormais or her toe. It is deplorable. Nothing is to be expected of the man who relies upon his memory in attacking an airplane. He may recall the way that some ace acted under similar circumstances. He may attain a measure of success, but he will never be a real scout. He, who has in him the quality of a champion, is the pilot who has recourse to his own initiative, to his own judgment, to his own personal equation. A tribute by Premier Georges Clemenceau, translated from the French. 6. How difficult it is to find a little black point through a rift in the clouds, which, found again soon afterwards in the field of blue, is about to wrap itself in a mist of white smoke, and seems to be celebrating in its own honor but is only death's messenger. That is Guynmerre, far up there, or some other of the Storks, under attack by German Trapnel. This war be on the range of vision in the tragic infinity of space watched by all the world. He, who is able to place himself in the first rank of that band of messengers, from the earth to the heights, in response to the winged beings that the heavens sent us long ago, fully merits to live among us as a symbol of one of the greatest efforts of the human will. There, all alone in the very highest, in the imperturbable calm of absolute self-possession, waiting for nothing but a succession of unerring motions, gauged by correctness of eyesight and promptness of bold decisions, on the edge of a bottomless abyss ready to swallow everything, with that the supreme aid of a look or the hand of a friend. Is that not something far above all the historic beauty of the greatest sacrifices for the noblest causes? Something as it were of a miraculous concentration of superhumanity? To face every day the sublime adventure, in the sun, in the wind, in the rain, to pursue the enemy and seize upon the decisive moment that will place him at the mercy of the cannon-aiding, beneath the fugitive angle which is offered suddenly, and will never occur again, to begin and begin again every day and to always come back victorious. Thus lived Geinmer, now born away in a great apotheosis amid the acclamations of his companions in glory. Geinmer, born to civil life like so many of his companions, when William II of Germany decided that the hour had come for France to demonstrate what she had preserved of that nobility of blood in which her history had been molded, Geinmer, without a word, resolved to lift his France to the highest, and upon that day when his destiny was achieved, all of us bear witness that he acted upon his resolution. One day it was granted me to clasp that hand in which not to quiver revealed the control of the supreme power of nerves and courage. Eyes of lovable youth, a gentle smile of timidity, simple quiet replies, gestures disguising the consciousness of great hours incessantly lived over. And the greatest heart lies the purest simplicity. When the history of the World War is finally written, one of the names conspicuous in its pages will be that of Georges Geinmer. The name of Geinmer has become synonymous with brave deeds and a symbolical of the great spiritual glory that belongs to France. Geinmer has been called the Ace of Aces and the Winged Sword of France, but these names express only in part the characteristics of a world famous hero whose life, as Clemenceau so aptly terms it, even though short, was a sufficiently beautiful adventure. Geinmer's part in the World War is over. His own active chapter is done, but his spirit lives on in the hearts of every allied airman. Geinmer, born in December 1894, was the son of a retired officer. As a boy he was agile and ambitious in sports, though of slender build and somewhat delicate. He was especially fond of mechanical toys and miniature airplanes, and even in the early school days, when flying was looked upon more as a sport than an actual military factor, Georges declared to his father his ambition to become an aviator. And then came the war. The youth, who because of physical weakness or refused admission to the army no less than five times, was finally accepted at the age of 20 on November 23, 1914. Then began a career that in a few short years was destined to make the name of Georges Geinmer immortal. Geinmer's first victory In describing his first meeting with the Bosch on July 19, 1915 to his friend Jacques Morton, Geinmer said, I was on a two-seated parasol with Gerder, my mechanic as passenger. I had promised myself for some time to undertake a pursuit of my airplane, but I had always been ordered on reconnaissance or photographic missions, and that kind of work did not suit me at all. It has always set aside for the newcomers in the squadrons, and I wanted to show that Grit was not the exclusive possession of the older men. It has always set aside for the newcomers in the squadrons, and I wanted to show that Grit was not the exclusive possession of the older men. A Bosch had been cited at Kuvra, and Geinmer took flight with Gerder and was soon in pursuit of the enemy. As the Bosch's plane was faster there was no possibility of catching him. Nevertheless, the joy of finding a first adversary made Geinmer eager to attempt anything. From a great distance he fired at his opponent, possibly without any hope of hitting him, but steadily nevertheless. He pursued him as far as the Coussi Aerodrome, where he saw him alight. This displeased Geinmer greatly. He had gone out to get a Bosch and had to go back empty-handed. There we were, he said, with these sad thoughts, when suddenly another black point appeared on the horizon. As we came nearer, the point became larger and was soon playing as a Bosch. He was moving towards the French lines, thinking only of what he might find ahead. He did not dream that on his track were two young fellows determined not to return to their squadron without performing their task. Two young fellows believed that to return to their headquarters without a Bosch would mean derision. It was not until Suassone was reached that we came up with them, and there the combat took place. During the space of ten minutes everybody in the city watched the fantastic duel over their heads. I kept about fifteen meters from my Bosch, below, back of and to the left of him, and notwithstanding all his twistings, I managed not to lose touch with him. Girder fired a hundred fifteen shots, but could not fire precisely as his gun jammed continually. On the other hand, in the course of the fight, my companion was hit by one bullet in the hand and another combed his hair. He answered with his rifle, shooting well. We began to ask ourselves how this duel was going to end, but at the one hundred fifteen shot fired by Girder, I saw the pilot fall to the bottom of his car, while the lookout raised his arms in a gesture of despair, and the plane did a nose spin and plunged down into the abyss in flames. He fell between the trenches. I hastened to land not far away. At last I was able to live my dream. I, who had so long desired to join in the fighting, had managed to gain a victory. What shall I say about the reception given me by the troops on the ground? Ovations, congratulations, all under the vengeful canon of the enemy. I have beaten down other Bosches since that time, but when I think over my aerial duels, my recollections always fly back to that first one. Official recognition came to Geenmare the next day, when the military medal was awarded him for being a pilot full of spirit and boldness. In considering Geenmare's personal accounts of his various flights, it is evident that the ace, while not inspired by the same craving for combat that Major Bishop acknowledges, was a hero of unusually high-pitched nerves, inspired with dreams of battle and whose quests for the Bosch were insatiable. Geenmare talked much concerning his will. It was his will to get into service in spite of his five rejections and being compelled to enter as a mechanic. He would score in an observer's work and become a hunter. He would make a score larger and larger. He would fly regardless of climactic conditions or his own health, going up even when convalescing from injuries. And it was this will which doubtless made in the terror of his enemies and the glory of France. Among the first duties assumed by an airman when he is learning the mastery of his machine is that of reconnaetering. But Geenmare, fast becoming specialized in pursuit, soon stopped all reconnaetering and found himself assigned to a single-seated airplane. It was on February 3rd, 1916 that in the course of a single flight he succeeded in getting his first official double. He was making his usual round in the Roy section just before noon, and it was about to end his flight when he saw an airplane in the distance. The game was coming to me, he said. All he had to do was not let it escape. Geenmare gave chase and soon caught up with it. The enemy did not seem to wish to avoid the fight. Possibly he had not seen Geenmare at all. Being faster than he, Geenmare got behind him opening fire at a hundred beaters, and as he fired at rapid intervals, his cartridges were soon exhausted. At that instant a cloud of smoke which increased rapidly made a sinister tale to the Bosch who dived severely wounded. He fell however within his own lines and Geenmare could not follow him to earth. It was certainly one enemy less, but Geenmare's total record was not improved. Fortune however favored him. I was coming back, he said, thinking over the methods of fighting, considering how I had attacked, asking myself whether I would not have done better to approach from some other direction. When at almost 1130 I found another hunting plane. Yes, I had made a mistake just now when I opened fire from so far away, I should have waited. At a hundred meters we cannot be sure of the aim. My method, which up to this time always consisted in attacking almost point blank, seemed to me much better. It is more risky but everything lies in maneuvering so as to remain in the dead angle of fire. Certainly it is rather difficult, but nevertheless it can be mastered with skill. While going over these things to myself, I had come near enough to the Bosch without running any great danger. At 20 meters I fired, almost at once my adversary tumbled in a tailspin. I dived after him continuing to fire my weapon. I plainly saw him fall on his lines. That was alright, no doubt about him. I had my fifth. I was really in luck for less than 10 minutes later another plane, sharing the same lot, spun downward with the same grace taking fire as it fell through the clouds. The second day afterwards, before freeze, in a new tit-a-tat with a hunting Bosch, I leaped forward, caught up with him, got him back of him, a little below to avoid his fire, and at 15 meters fired 45 cartridges. He swayed sadly in the shock of death, which I was beginning to be able to diagnose, then fall like a stone, taking fire on the way. He must have been burned up between a Sevillier and Arebkor. Although he was really my seventh Bosch, he alone gained me the honor of a special mention. Gingmeir's fifth citation rewarded him for this exploit and declared him a hunting pilot with audacity and energy for any adventure. According to Gingmeir's own testimony, one of the most difficult things an airman of the allies has to do is to compel the Bosch to accept the duel, not that the latter lacks courage, but rather that he prefers not to run the risk of being brought down. As a result of foreseen engagements, Gingmeir seldom returned from a flight without a wound of some sort or other. On several occasions his garments were drilled with holes, his clothing more than once taking on the appearance of a sieve. This was the youth, who in less than eight months from the downing of his fifth Bosch had been awarded seven palms for his warcross. Gingmeir and his parents Like Nungaser, Dormais, and Tribulet, Gingmeir would not rest when he had left the hospital convalescent from some of his more serious wounds, and it is by signs like these that we find the souls of great heroes who know nothing about vacations, even for their health so long as others are fighting. Gingmeir was not strong, and should have rested after his stay in the hospital. His parents begged him to rest, so Gingmeir compromised by agreeing to establish himself near his family at Compiègne, where at the same time he could serve France. Not far from his paternal home at Vossien, his baby Newport rested in a hangar ready to carry him into those great open spaces to search for the enemy whenever the atmosphere permitted. One of the hero's sisters was entrusted with the task of studying the atmosphere at dawn each day to see if it were Bosch weather, and as soon as it was light enough slyly, like a boy planting mischief against the orders of his elders, the second Latinidase came down from his room and mounted his Newport for a prospective fray. He was convinced that no one in the house suspected his escapades except his sister. How little he understood the hearts of a father and mother. Father Gingmeir has told of the anxieties the worries lived through during that convalescence. The boy had gone. Would he come back? Would some hateful enemy appear on the way and prevent his return to the bosom of his family? The minutes of anxiety were as long as centuries. As for the loving mother Gingmeir, she did not dare show her son that she was undeceived by his stratagems, nor did she wish him to see her when she watched him fly away. Through the blinds, with tear-dimmed eyes, she watched him depart in the service of his country. When she saw her boy draw far away, she returned to her household duties, but not until George's machine had become a tiny speck. Here is one of the most moving pages in the hero's life. This feigned ignorance on the part of the parents, the plotting of brother and sister. Gingmeir, face to face with his family, pretended that he would run no danger. He insisted on his own prudence. Nothing serious could happen to him because he avoided all risks. But as soon as he began to turn the conversation upon the subject which was all his life, the comforting words which he had spoken word once contradicted by the many adventures and varied anecdotes which he recalled. No peril had been too great for him. He played with danger and looked for it. A Fall of 3000 Meters Gingmeir hated the word luck, perhaps because he was accused of having so much of it, and when his spad was struck by a shell 3000 meters from the earth, the airman falling the entire distance, he repudiated the suggestion that this was a lucky star. This phenomenal escape took place on September 23rd, 1916. Gingmeir having just finished an exploit humorously sat down by his friend Morton as follows, put an egg in boiling water when the ace of aces begins a battle, you wait until he is down to three bosses, you take out the egg and it is done to a turn. What a triumph for the restaurant menus. While contemplating the immensity of the azure heavens at an altitude of 3000 meters above the earth, Gingmeir suddenly felt a shell strike one of the wings of his airplane with all its force. The left wing was torn to shreds, the cannabis scent floating in the wind as the airman and his machine began to dissent. My apparatus fell, said Gingmeir, broke apart, crumbled in the abyss, unable to bear me any longer. I really felt the call of death, and I seemed to be hastening towards it. It seemed that there was nothing to prevent my crashing to the earth. A tailspin, terrible, fearful, began at 3000 meters and continued to 1600 meters. I felt as if I were indeed lost, and all that I asked of providence was that I should not fall in enemy territory. Never that. They would have been too happy. Can you think of me buried with my victims? But I was powerless to exert my will, my airplane refused to obey. At 1600 meters I tried anyway. The wind had driven me almost over our lines. I was already half happy. Now I dreamed of being interred with sympathetic comrades following my body. That was not a fine dream, but at least it was better than the other. I had no longer to fear the pointed helmets. But, nevertheless, I felt all the death might be, and it was not a pleasant thought. The fall continued. The steering gear would not respond to my tugging. Nothing worked. I tried it to the right, to the left, pulling, pushing, but got no result. The comet did not slow a bit. I was drawn invincibly toward the earth, where I was about to be crushed. There it was. One last brutal effort but in vain. I closed my eyes. I saw the earth. I was plunging towards it at 180 kilometers an hour, like a plummet. A terrible crashing. A great noise. I looked around. There was nothing left of my spad. How did it happen that I was still alive? I asked myself, but I felt that it was so, and that was enough. However, I think that it was the straps which held me in my seat that had saved me. Without them I would have been thrown forward or would have broken some bones. On the contrary, they were dug deep into my shoulders. A silent proof, doubtless, that I should give them full consideration. Had it not been for them, I would certainly have been killed. A kilometer is a thousand meters, or 3,280 feet, ten inches. Infantrymen hurried to the spot to pick up the pieces. Finding Geen Mair not only alive, but unhurt except for a bruised knee, they conducted him home in triumph, singing the Marsilets at the top of their voices. Geen Mair went to view the remains of the Bosch that he had brought down first. The pilot had on his body a card, almost burned up, on which a feminine hand had written these words. I hope that you will bring back many victories. A Quadruple Victory The magic quadruple, the successive defeat of four airplanes, was Geen Mair's achievement, one of which was downed in one minute on May 25th, 1917, according to the following schedule. First airplane, 830. Second airplane, 831. Third airplane, 1201. Fourth airplane, 630. Four airplanes beaten down on one day by the same aviator was a record. On February 26th, 1916, Navarra secured his first double. Nungaserra on the sum destroyed a balloon and two airplanes on a single morning, but by his quadruple victory, Geen Mair exceeded these two earlier records and the one established by himself in the Lorraine when he brought down three airplanes in one day. On the morning of May 25th, Geen Mair saw three enemy airplanes flying in concert toward French lines. He pounced upon them and they took to flight. He attacked one of them, maneuvering to get him in the line of fire, then fired and after the first shots the enemy machine dived and fell in flames. Meanwhile, the danger for the single seated machine was surprised from the rear. While he was attacking in front, it was necessary for Geen Mair to watch the rear. Geen Mair turned and saw a second adversary coming full at him, trying to reach him, but he had fired already from above downward and hit him with an explosive bullet. Like the first, this airplane took fire. The victories of Geen Mair were lightning-like, requiring only a few seconds of fighting. His only injury was a bruised knee. Towards noon, an audacious German airplane flew over the aviation field. French squadrons have taught the enemy respect for their lines and the unfortunate fellow who ventures above them seldom returns home. It was something of a mystery how this one had broken through the barrage, but to ascend to the sky after him and to reach him no matter how speedy the machine required several minutes, time enough for the enemy to flee, his mission accomplished. All of the machines had come down except the one driven by Geen Mair. Geen Mair came upon his adversary like a whirlwind. He fired, only one shot from his machine gun was heard. The airplane fell, the propeller revolving at full speed, and dug itself into the earth. Geen Mair had killed the pilot with a bullet in the head. That evening, Geen Mair went out for the third time. It was about seven o'clock, over the gardens of Guignacore, that a fourth machine, beaten down by him, fell in flames. And as the young conqueror came down at sunset, he executed all kinds of fancy figures in the air to announce his victory to his comrades. All the turns and twists and loopings of which he was so great a master. But some facts must be added as a sequence to the official announcements. The first airplane brought down was a two-seater, one of whose wings was broken in descent. It fell into the trees near Corbini. The second, another two-seater, fell on fire near Juvencor. The third was also brought down a fire near Colendaux. Finally, the fourth also sit on fire, dropped between Condescer Sweep and Guignacore. Add to this that on the same day, Geen Mair had collaborated with Captain Algera, the slain ace, in putting to flight a group of six single-seaters. It was the quadruple that brought Captain Geen Mair the rosette of the Legion of Honor with this commendation. An elite officer, a fighting pilot as skillful as Laudaceous. He has rendered glowing service to the country both by the number of his victories and the daily example he has set of burning ardor and even greater mastery increasing from day to day. Unconscious of danger, unaccounted of his sureness of method and precision of maneuvers, he has become the most redoubtable of all to the enemy. On May 25th, 1917, he accomplished one of his most brilliant exploits, beating down two enemy airplanes in one minute and gaining two more victories on the same day. By all of his exploits he has contributed towards exalting the courage and enthusiasm of those who, from the trenches, were the witnesses of his triumphs. He has brought down 45 airplanes, received 20 citations, and been seriously wounded twice. One of the most conspicuous virtues of Geen Mair was his extreme modesty. He wore his crosses and medals not from love of show, declaring that while it was sweet to know one was celebrated, that glory was accompanied by many drawbacks. You no longer belong to yourself, said Geen Mair. You belong to everybody. To be well known is to see around you all the time a number of persons who never cared for you before, but have suddenly assumed a pseudo friendship for you. All at once they find out that you are a charming conversationalist and evidently find soul into more of the same kind of gush. Their object is to go out with you and to take you to see their people, and when they look at you they imagine that you admire them, such is the misfortune of renown. You no longer know where sincerity begins, whether they are pleasant to you out of friendship or vanity. We are apt to become unjust to those who do not deserve it, and confide in others who deserve it still less. THE LAST FLIGHT It was on August 20, 1917, that Geen Mair, piloting old Charles, achieved his last official triumph, a German plane which crashed at Earth at Pomperein, a few days after that, Geen Mair took command of the Stork Squadron, thus the difficult task of guiding the administrative work of the Storks fell upon the shoulders of this young soldier. With these new duties, he might have abstained from flying, but this would not have been like Geen Mair. He flew from five to six hours each day. On September 11, notwithstanding the bad weather, Geen Mair started upon a cruise with 2nd Lieutenant Verderaz. After furrowing space for a long time without success, for atmospheric conditions kept the Bosches on Earth, the two pilots at last saw a two-seater which appeared to be lost on the clouds. The hero darted forward, attacked, but his gun missed fire. He maneuvered for position again, without even trying to dodge the answering fire, so sure was he of himself in dealing with this Bosch. A single two-seater was but a trivial thing to him. 2nd Lieutenant Bozon Verderaz had gone towards other fights with the conviction that his comrade Wood, without a doubt, come out of the duel victorious. Geen Mair, the hero of dreams, had vanished a mystery. And here above Polkapell, the career of this most brilliant pilot of the air was terminated, after he had added up 755 hours of airplane flight. The censor forbade the announcement of Geen Mair's disappearance, but the news was passed from mouth to mouth. Geen Mair? Everyone deemed him invulnerable, no one believed that he could be killed. But many days afterward came the news from a German source. The ace of aces had been beaten down near the cemetery of Flemish Polkapell. Two soldiers had been present at the place of the catastrophe. One wing of the spad had been broken. The pilot lay there, killed, with a bullet in his head, and one leg broken. The ace of aces had been beaten down near the cemetery of Flemish Polkapell. Two soldiers had been present at the place of the catastrophe. One wing of the spad had been broken. The pilot lay there, killed, with the bullet in his head, and one leg broken. On him was found his commission, which made it possible to identify the body. The district in which King Mair had ended his career in a burst of glory was being hammered by the English artillery. Attacks followed. The Allies looked for his grave in the Cemetery of Pole Cappell when they took it, but they never succeeded in finding it. It was learned later that on account of the incessant danger, the Germans had not been able to remove the remains to enter them. The soul of King Mair and the Great Beyond had the supreme satisfaction of knowing that the body was not defiled by his enemy. Lieutenant Wiseman, the German airman who had brought King Mair's career to a close, survived his success but a few days. The Ongoing Loose me from fear and make me see a riot how each has back what once he stayed to weep. Home or his sight, David is a little lad. He will not come, the gallant flying boy, back to his field. Somewhere he wings his way where the immortals keep, where Homer now has back his sight, David is a little lad. Where all those are we duly call the dead, who have gone greatly on some shining quest, he takes his way. That which he quested for, that larger freedom of a larger birth captains him, flying into fields of dawn. He has gone on where now the soldier slaying arises in light. Somewhere he takes his place and leads his comrades in untrodden fields. For never can these rest until our earth is ceased from travail. Never can these take their fill of sleep until the scourge is slain. And so they keep them sometimes near old ways in the accustomed fields. Now flying low, invisible, they cheer the gallant hosts, spitting them be as they invincible. He will never come back. But we who watched him take the upper air and steer his boundless path firmly against the foe, we know